I hope you all had a chance to dig into the sonic buffet that was last week’s episode of the Iron Leg Radio Show. There was a veritable borgas-smord of groovy delights, with which to stuff your ears.

The tune I bring you today was a delightful little surprise when my man Haim dropped a stack of jukebox EPs into my crates from his perch out on the coast.

There was all kinds of cool stuff, but the record I gravitated to first was this little gem by Sandy Nelson.

A hitmaking drummer, Nelson released a grip of albums during the 60s, which – like most cool instro discs – I generally grab when I’m out digging because the song selection is often very cool and execution is as well.

I had never heard the tune ‘Boss Beat’ before, but as soon as I saw the ‘Jim Messina’ writing credit, my interest was piqued and I knew I had to give it a spin.

Though he is best known for his years alongside Kenny Loggins and his time before than in the Buffalo Springfield, fans of twangy guitars will be hip to the fact that he spent some of his early years making excellent surf records with his band the Jesters.

I don’t know how Messina hooked up with Sandy Nelson (or who his co-writer Kay Classey was), but ‘Boss Beat’ is a treat.

There’s a certain magic around the music in Southern California in 1965 where all of the previous musical threads, surf, R&B, rockabilly and pure rock’n’roll started to get mixed up with all the new sounds coming into shape, including garage, British beat and various and sundry au-go-go styles.

‘Boss Beat’ is a great example of a transitional record, in which the old and the new are both present, wrestling for dominance and managing to produce something very groovy in the process.

You get plenty of hard hitting drums from Nelson, twangy guitar (rumored to Messina himself), which all sound pretty run of the mill until the combo organ comes in and starts to work it out, at which point things start to take on a garage-cum-spy soundtrack edge that no doubt had the go-go girls shaking it in their cages.

The track I bring you today has been sitting in my crates for a good long time, passed along to me by a benefactor (I cannot recall exactly who) close to 20 years ago.

I do remember who turned me on to the song for the first time, since it was none other than Ugly Things honcho Mike Stax, via a cassette trade back in the 90s in furtherance of my Gram Parsons completism.

The song in question, ‘November Night’ is a song that Parsons wrote in the mid-60s but never took past the demo stage.

It was Parsons’ friend, actor Brandon DeWilde, who introduced he and the International Submarine Band to Peter Fonda, who enlisted them to appear in his 1967 film‘The Trip’.

Appear they did, but only after their music was dubbed over with a track by the Electric Flag, but that is – as they say – another story.

At some point in that convoluted interaction, Fonda, who was dabbling in music, picked up ‘November Night’ and recorded it.

As the story goes, none other than Hugh Masekela heard Fonda playing guitar at a party and suggested that he make a record. Fonda went into the studio during 1966 and recorded an album’s worth of songs for Masekela and Stewart Levine’s Chisa label, of which only ‘November Night’ and its flip side, a cover of Donovan’s ‘Catch the Wind’ ever made it to vinyl.

Writers Artie Kornfeld and Steve Duboff in their guise as the
Changin’ Times on Shivaree in 1965

Eddie Simon (left) and some other guy with a guitar…

Listen/Download – The Collection – Tomorrow Is a Window

Greetings all.

Welcome to 2013…

The tune I have for you today is an especially groovy one, so open up your Sunshine Pop ears and dig.

I haven’t been able to track down anything much on The Collection.

The cut you see before you today – ‘Tomorrow Is a Window’ – was released in 1968, with a great version of ‘Both Sides Now’ on the flip.

I’ve been picking up a lot of Sunshine Pop-type stuff over the last few years, mainly because it’s obscure (I’m always on the hunt for new sounds) and generally very cheap (on account of I’m a cheapskate).

‘Tomorrow Is a Window’ was released in 1968 and as far as I can tell generated absolutely zero chart heat anywhere in the known universe.

This is of course too bad, because if the sunshiney thing is your bag, this is an especially groovy example of the species.

It does come with a rather nice pedigree, being co-written by Eddie Simon (brother of the famous Paul), Artie Kornfeld and Steve Duboff (of the Changin’ Times) and arranged by Jimmy Wisner.

Eddie Simon is a very interesting guy who was completely unknown to me until about a year ago. I was watching a 1969 Simon and Garfunkel TV special, and at one point I see a guy sitting next to Paul Simon (who looked just like him), and I say to my wife ‘I wonder if that’s his brother?’ I set to Googling and whattyaknow, it was indeed his brother, who had an interesting career of his own.

In addition to the Collection, he recorded with a group called the Guild Light Gauge, and as one half of the duo Crib and Ben, releasing singles with both.*

The vocalist is a guy with a high voice (maybe Eddie??) , though there are times where he is joined by a female singer.

The arrangement starts out kind of bubblegummy, but soon jums up a few notches on the cool scale, with some sophisticated strings and a soaring harmony vocal that can only be described as Boettcher-esque (I would suggest the use of headphones to get the full effect).

Discogs lists a second 45 by the group, but I see nothing on the label that would suggest that it was in fact the same crew. If anyone has any additional info, please drop me a line.

That all said, this is the kind of stuff that can be described (in a complimentary manner, of course) as ear candy.